ACTILITY

Mobile World Congress: Actility, the industry leader in
Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), today announces the launch of
ThingPark X, a data mediation and transformation platform. The first
deployment will see RS Components (RS) combining LoRaWAN sensors with
ThingPark X data connectors and IBM’s Watson IoT Platform and IBM Maximo
Asset Management to enable predictive maintenance and process
optimization in their Nuneaton warehouse. ThingPark X extends the
ThingPark IoT Platform, allowing data from any device connected to a
ThingPark-powered network to be aggregated, transformed, analysed and
exposed to applications by standard APIs or delivered onward to third
party cloud platforms such as IBM Bluemix.

RS is one of the world’s largest electronics and industrial components
distributors, offering over 500,000 products to more than a million
customers, and shipping over 44,000 packages a day. Paul Redmond,
Business Relationship Manager at RS, is driving the company’s IoT
initiative. Redmond is a leading proponent of IoT as a vehicle for
reducing MRO costs for RS customers. “We are working with IBM Watson IoT
and Actility ThingPark to put in place a LPWAN-to-cloud network in our
70,000 sq. feet warehouse in Nuneaton. This initiative has the potential
to deliver hundreds of thousands of pounds of savings through the
application of predictive maintenance to optimize performance and
uptime, and Big Data to improve productivity, efficiency and energy
sustainability.”

“ThingPark X allows our customers like RS Components to use the power of
our platform to help turn data into valuable business insight,” explains
Actility CEO Mike Mulica. “The real value in the IoT comes not from
gathering millions or billions of data points, but from making sense of
that data to drive real business value, by taking better decisions about
maintenance or optimising processes. ThingPark X is a key element of
that process, making a bridge for the data between the ThingPark
Wireless IoT network and the applications our customers are using to
analyse their data with their preferred cloud platforms host. We’re
delighted to be able to harness the global reach of the ThingPark to the
power of cloud platforms like IBM Bluemix to transform businesses around
the world.”

ThingPark X provides tools to make the data from sensors more accessible
and easily used by applications and services. It provides translation
services, which allow a single application to seamlessly make use of
data from devices that use different IoT communication protocols such as
Zigbee and MBus. This data is accessible to developers through
standardised APIs; developers can also call on dozens of APIs to control
and manage actions from devices or network supervision systems. Within
ThingPark X, there is a library of drivers and decoders for the most
common LPWA devices, and modular analytics and control applications, for
example predictive modelling algorithms, available to speed the
development of end to end services. Finally, ThingPark X offers a range
of “connectors” which transmit data to cloud platforms for easy
ingestion by applications, and which can also route downlink data and
control requests back from the cloud to the sensor or device connected
to the LPWA network.

ThingPark X is a component of Actility’s ThingPark IoT platform, which
also comprises ThingPark Wireless, which oversees the connection of
devices and sensors to LPWA communication networks, and manages the
network; ThingPark OS, which supports business processes and
monetisation of networks; and ThingPark Market, an ecommerce engine for
IoT devices, applications and connectivity.

“The launch of ThingPark X, and our engagement with the world’s largest
cloud platforms, including IBM Bluemix, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft
Azure, Bosch IoT, ThingWorx, GE Predix and Daliworks, is the next step
in our strategy to deliver the most comprehensive and global IoT
solution platform,” says Actility SVP of Products Boris Lacroix. “But in
line with our approach all along, that platform is modular, and embraces
a broad range of partners in every strata of IoT activity. We want to
allow our customers, and our partners’ customers, to be able to choose
how to create the solution that’s right for their application,
connecting them to the intelligence that’s available across the whole
IoT ecosystem to drive the transformation of their business.”